Social Syndication, 5 Secrets to Broadcasting Value and Expertise with Twitter

Twitter is becoming the center of the social networking universe. There are literally hundreds of social sites, services to host content or media, and networked communities; however, Twitter is the definitive communications network. Learn to use it to create a powerful social syndication system.

Define Social Marketing Objective
Before you start any social marketing strategy define the results you want and the market you want to target.

Are you marketing for traffic, back links, awareness, credibility, or direct sales? Each objective or combinations can alter your social syndication plan. If you are looking for traffic and backlinks, you may syndicate blog posts or articles. Whereas, building credibility and direct sales may direct you to syndicate squeeze page links and ebooks.

Even more critical is defining your target market. Who buys your product or service? Be careful not to slip into the trap of talking to your industry instead of your customer. Talk about their benefits, not your solutions. This will typically curb the “shop lingo” and get you into good conversations with customers.

Build Social Profile
Tightly tied to selecting your objectives and niche is the social profile you build. No social syndication strategy works without some semblance of being a part of the community. In this example we are using Twitter to syndicate–so become a member of Twitter.

Most social syndication plans fail at the point of sign-up to the social network or site.

Social networks operate on the principles of community, which means you have to be in the community to effectively leverage the community. Simply subscribing to Twitter, or any other service, and blasting out offers, promotions, and even valuable content is useless. Use instead this simple 5-step formula for building a successful social profile:

1. Pick a niche (topic) that targets and is interesting to your customer
2. Point your social profile URL to a blog or website that demonstrates authority
3. First, interact with the community using questions (use keywords to draw in followers)
4. Next, interact with the community using links to other (non-competitive) valuable resources (keywords draw in more followers)
5. Finally, begin to intersperse targeted commentary and self-serving content links (repeat 3-5)

Connect Social Content Networks
Now that you have an audience and you are seeding them with regular content it is time to put things on auto-moneymaking.

Most all of your popular social sites and networks have a way to broadcast updates to Twitter–connect them. This will provide a steady flow of valuable content that will drive traffic, backlinks, and add followers.

Here are a few of the ones you should consider:

• WordPress blog plug-in
• Google Reader
• FriendFeed
• Delicious
• eZineArticles

Now as you browse the web or go about your normal routine of consuming content you are syndicating your interesting reads, commentary, and personal content to your audience. The other secondary effect is that each syndication draws in additional followers (growing your social network) because of keyword searches, re-tweets (re-syndication), and follower comments.

Social Syndication
Social syndication, especially with Twitter, helps you to quickly build a targeted, engaged, and responsive audience for your products and services. Using these simple tips to create a powerful social network will immediately ramp your traffic, links, and sales.

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